Tijuana Panthers, punk spaghetti
Deviation leads to derision. And logically, derision leads to sarcasm – if it counts it at the second degree. Neither more nor less, when the term “spaghetti” is used, we mock the seriousness and everyone minds their business. The western genre was the first to develop in this Italian pasta. Those of you who know Sergio Leone, with the classic false visceral blends of trivial struggles between good and evil, often unilateral – the villain is certainly bad – in long strident and legendary sequence shots, with poor justicers, who claim to hold the fate of the world between their arched legs although they are just rulers of their old village. Guns explode, carts burn, trains derail and prisons are places where one escapes more than remains locked in. It’s a modern vision of the genre that the master Quentin Tarantino has already initiated – even engulfed – we could forget the epic music of armed duels and replace it with Tijuana Panthers to stir the crazy essence in these irresistible masquerades.
Ideally, a horse would have done the job. But it is a trinket panther that steals the show: “Phil, our drummer, had a neighbour who one day returned from Tijuana with a crazy story and a porcelain panther. He gave this panther to Phil, which subsequently inspired the name of the group.” Further north, on the California coast of Long Beach, the Tijuana Panthers’ music took a scenic and disenchanted turn. Chad, Daniel and Phil create gentle rough titles, fierce and light, confused but structured at the same time. This bipolarity remembers the illusion of the American dream, which contrasts the ideal and the real, the exacerbated wealthy and poverty of the soul, in an envious and desirable world. You could probably compare their ghosts to those of David Lynch, but it is wiser to project their music in a less tortured climate. Therefore, the roots of the Panthers draw from punk, pop and solar shades of “surf music.” From Parquet Courts to Fidlar, the album “Wayne Interest” is a tribute to The Clash. But in a delirium which is more driven. Let yourself be surprised by the image of a spring-break in the 70’s, with tight leather and relaxed unusual appearances, forgetting bare breasts and beer pumps of the furious youth.
© Julien Catala
